


Stables

by emily31594



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, The Missing Year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:23:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5192204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily31594/pseuds/emily31594
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You'll forgive me if I had no desire of watching you pull away come morning." <br/>Her voice is warm, determined, flirtatious, and beneath it all genuinely curious, "How do you know I won't do that now?" <br/>"I know you won't want to."<br/>Outlaw Queen, missing year, in the stables...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stables

The woman grooming the mare in the second stall flinches as he enters, her shoulders tight, her fingers twitching on the brush.

It takes Robin no more than a moment to recognize her silky dark hair, the tensed poise of her limbs, the strong set of her jaw.

"Apologies, Milady," he voices softly, her half-down hair shifting behind her shoulders as she turns to look at him. Her stern glance is undone a bit by the way the grey mare nudges her hand in protest to her interrupted grooming.

Something about the Queen is different, today; gentler, more subdued. It is not only the deep maroon of her brocade vest and dark brown trousers, the soft curls of her half tied-back hair, the subtler shades of lip color and eye liner, the matte black leather of her flat-heeled boots.  _She_  is different here as well, not quite as tense or volatile, or at least, not revealing those things through her very breath.

She feels safe here, that much is clear, and he is intruding.

"I was just searching for Roland's cloak," he explains, eager to leave her to her seeming peace, for he knows she has so little of it, "he seems to have left it here this morning."

Regina nods her head in the direction of the stall between them, to a wool cloak sitting folded and draped over an empty stall door, her eyes firm and almost unreadable. And yet something about this slightly less barbed and still endlessly captivating Regina makes him loathe to just—walk away.

"Thank you." He takes a couple of steps closer to her in order to retrieve the cloak, smoothing it over his arm as he asks, "Is she yours?"

"No." Regina swallows, hanging to brush on a nearby hook. She finally meets his eyes. Her pursed lips split apart, her eyes widening just a fraction, he hopes (always hopes, for she looks at him like this more often than she'd probably admit) as she finds the openness and trust and respect in his eyes and understands it to be for her.

"She needed grooming, and I needed rest from…" she continues, trailing off as Robin steps silently into the space in front of her and strokes a palm down the mare's forehead.

"People," he suggests, snagging an apple from a sack near their feet and offering it up to the mare, who snatches it happily.

"Yes," she agrees with a mirthless smile.

"I'll get out of your way, then, Milady," he promises, bowing and giving the mare a final pat. He only barely reigns in his chuckle as Regina gives in to the horse's prodding and reaches for a second apple.

"Only the best for those you truly care for," he observes, more to himself than to her.

Her dark eyes flash to his, the silence weighted between them.

"Milady, I have long meant to—and have never found the right moment to—"he stumbles, clearing his throat and fiddling with a crease in Roland's cloak, though his eyes never leave her, "thank you for your gift. The golden arrows. It was a—truly kind gesture."

She is silent for several moments on end, and then her voice breaks into the quiet sounds of their breaths, "So the thief knows how to value gold," she observes, the derisive tone the same as always, but shaky around the edges in a way it rarely has been.

"I know how to value you," he returns, unfazed, "and if you don't know that, well, you've been fooling yourself since the moment we met."

Regina sniffs haughtily, her eyes closing in a little, the way she does when she feels overexposed, when someone's hit on something raw and true and jagged in her heart. "I'm glad you've felt you were sufficiently rewarded by my beauty."

"Regina," he sighs, exasperated and, all right, a bit hurt, his hand itching to reach out and touch her, to do anything to help convince her of his true feelings, "why can't you believe—" he stumbles on the words as her eyes find his again, dark and bottomless, and her hand comes to rest on his neck, fingers spread against his skin, "—me," he finishes, swallowing heavily.

She leans the slightest bit forward, her hand sliding into his hair, her eyes fluttering closed.

And she kisses him.

It's heated from the start, leaving his head spinning and his limbs so unsteady that Roland's cloak lands on the ground in an unnoticed heap.

She pulls away before he's regained control of his muscles and limbs enough to kiss her back. For a second he wonders if giving into this right now is as good of an idea as he wants it to be, or the monumentally bad one he so hopes it isn't.

He desires her, has since the moment he set eyes on the stunning queen with veins of fire breaking through the blackness she wears as her armor. But he wants to do this right, because that desire runs deeper than her silky hair and warm-toned skin and figure. He wants her to know that he means this, deeply and honestly, to believe that he wants her, all of her. He couldn't bear her truly believing anything different.

He waits for her to do what she always does, to shove away his tender touch and kiss him and demand that he stop being so damned sentimental. But when he does settle a gentle hand on her spine, he feels a shiver creep its way up her back as she looks into his eyes and leans unconsciously closer. He meets her gaze unflinchingly, his thumb stroking back and forth along the base of her back, and she meets his gaze as well.

This time, he kisses her. He swallows her surprised gasp, vaguely aware of the thump of her shoulders against the stall door wood, the only thing stopping them from falling as they stumble from the force of his kiss. He hesitates for the briefest of moments to make certain she's all right, to pass a soothing palm over her shoulders and belatedly cushion her fall, but then her arm is sliding around his neck to tug him closer, Regina resting her weight against a stable door and pulling him with her. Her kiss is fire, open mouth and sliding tongue and clenching hands in his hair, on his shirt.

He responds in kind, one hand buried in dark waves of hair, the other cradling her neck. For all her passion, what leaves him most breathless is the way her hand smooths over his linen shirt and curls around his side, the way her so recently tense muscles relax against him; the tenderness of her touch, even if she doesn't consciously realize it. And she must, he thinks, hopes, as his lips move to her neck and she sighs in his ear; she must know, deep in her heart, how she feels.

" _Robin_ ," she gasps on a sharp inhale.

"Mm," he hums, his voice sounding rough with desire even to his own ear. He grins, lips skimming along her jaw, "so you do know my name."

He feels her jaw shift beneath his lips, and then she's pushing him back, his whole body suddenly cool at the loss of contact, his stomach dropping as her hands rest on his neck and she stands at her full height.

She's stopping this now. Which is fair; he's stopped them at this point before, when she kissed him on Henry's birthday with a tense jaw and tears in her eyes, and weeks later, when she told him the story of Daniel, trying and failing to hide the tears gathering in her eyes. But he had hoped that this time would be different, that today they might both have reached for each other without feeling so raw and overexposed that it would only push them farther apart in the end.

By the time his eyes refocus on hers, his head is spinning with all of it—need, desire, hope, disappointment, affection—so it catches him decidedly off-guard when she shakes her head, a hint of a smile breaking through, her voice low and rough and tender, "You are such a  _fool_."

His eyes narrow confusedly of their own accord, apprehension slithering around his stomach.

He knows of her feelings, would bet on them as surely as he would his own, and yet it seems that only serves to sharpen the sting when she pulls away.

She needs time to heal, but she also needs companionship, friendship, love—if only she would let herself.

"Robin," she repeats, breaking through his thoughts. She tilts her head as though she's just noticed something new in him. Her hands coast from his neck, across his shoulders, down his arms, and she grasps his faltering hands, sliding them back onto her hips. The touch sends a pleasured shiver through him, and yet he still has not been shaken out of his perplexity enough to notice when she begins to walk him back toward the opposite stall door. Her hands find their place on his chest, lips on the spot under his jaw that invariably tears a groan from his throat. Not stopping, then.

" _Thief_ ," she adds tauntingly, the word a far cry from the accusation he usually feels it to be, "afraid a queen is too much for you? And I thought you stole from the royals of these lands with ease."

He scoffs at that, adrenaline thrumming through his veins, and to hell with it, if it only lasts for this day, or even this hour. That won't make this any less real, any less honest, and perhaps the next time she goes to snap at him to keep him distant, this memory will guide her instead. Perhaps, someday, she'll be ready to face the way she knows they feel about each other.

"I think we can agree, Milady," he retorts, swallowing a moan as her tongue circles his pulse point, "that if you have not yet in our acquaintance had the urge to charr me to a crisp, you are clearly not too much for me."

She pulls back, her eyes on his again as he continues, "And, unlike with that imbecile King George and his jewels," he traces her stubbornly set lips with his thumb, "I will take nothing from you that you do not wish to give."

"What makes you think I've never considered charring you to a crisp?" she demands, lips pursed in indignation, eyes dancing dangerously, and Gods she is stunning, stubbornly trying to ignore the way his promise has gotten under her skin.

"I do not doubt that you have," he assures her. "Admit it, though," he adds, his fingers tangling in her gloriously long hair, "you'd miss me if I were gone."

"Would I?"

"I know you better than you give me credit for, Milady."

"So sure of yourself." She reaches down between them, her palm pressing into him, fingers tracing his length through his cotton trousers, and he can't contain a heavy groan as pleasure coils tight and unfurls from her touch.

"I believe it would be  _you_ who would miss  _me_ , outlaw."

"I wouldn't dare disagree with Her Majesty," he allows, voice breathless and shaky, eyes squeezing shut.

"Ah, so  _you_  do know  _my_  name," she taunts, her fingertips now only barely touching him. He can hear her smirk in the air at the way his hips jerk into her hand.

"Yes,  _Regina_ ," he returns pointedly, if breathlessly, "I do."

"If you know me so well," she huffs, growing impatient and pressing her hands against his chest until they take another step towards the stall door, "you should stop talking so much. Unless you've forgotten that it was  _you_  who stopped this before."

"You were upset," he argues.

"The thief, scared off so easily."

"On the contrary," Robin disagrees, "you are always quite stunning." His finger traces around her eyes, down her nose, and across her lips, and he notes the way her arms tense even as her face relaxes beneath his touch. A woman of contradictions. How quickly he is falling for her. "You'll forgive me if I had no desire of watching you pull away come morning."

Her voice is warm, determined, flirtatious, and beneath it all genuinely curious, "How do you know I won't do that now?"

He spins them suddenly, pressing her against the door with a hand on her back to cushion her. For a moment, the sight of her leaves him breathless and unmoving. Her hair has fallen out of its clasp and tumbles in soft waves down her back and shoulders. Her lip color has rubbed off—probably onto him, he thinks, his heart stuttering—leaving her lips a warm, natural red. Her eyes are dark and bright and he is drowning in them.

He kisses her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth, and tells her, "I know you won't want to," before finally joining their mouths, allowing himself to revel in the pleasure of it, to trust in the moment, and her impatient whimper and grasping hands as the kiss heats.

His right hand hovers over the black ties of her brocade vest as his left threads through silken strands of her hair. "You are so beautiful," he breathes against her lips.

"Robin," she orders, untying the knot of her laces impatiently and tugging at the laces even as she hitches a leg around his, "get on with it."

He swallows heavily. She is driving him to madness, the intoxicating pull of her touch and her voice and her closeness, but he wants this to be her decision, because he made his own a long time ago, that he would always strive to be someone who doesn't add to her burdens, her regrets, who doesn't push her into things for which she is not ready. "I want you to-I want it to be your choice," he confesses, hands unmoving in her hair and at her hip. He's aware of how foolish he must sound to her, with his length hard against her belly and her every touch sending air rushing in and out of his lungs, but he cares for this woman enough to stand his ground. This has to come from her. And Gods, the thought of her reaching for him, wanting him, choosing him, leaves his heart thrumming and his cock hardening.

"Do I seem uncertain?" she challenges, rocking her hips into his, smirking against his mouth as a halting breath stutters from his lips and he hardens further. When he remains still, she pulls back and shakes her head almost fondly, clearly impatient with his continued hesitation, and yet, deep down, he trusts, grateful for the intent behind it. Her fingers find the laces of his own leather vest and begin to tug the knots free, her palm sliding down his chest and the flimsy linen tunic that covers it. Her eyes are dark and vulnerable as they stare into his, and everything in him aches for her, and for the past that has taught her to fear this. "I'm certain that I want you right now."

He cannot stop the soft smile that spreads across his face, nor the way he leans forward to drop his forehead onto hers, though she stops him with a palm flattened over his pounding heart. "Just this once," she clarifies, catching his eyes in a gaze that would be stern, if her eyelids were not fluttering as he began to work at the laces of her vest.

He flattens a palm over her racing heart. "We'll see."

He pushes her vest down her arms until it falls to the ground, his hands sliding under her black cotton shirt, against her skin, his mouth meeting hers for a tongue-filled kiss.

His palm coasts up from her hips gently, despite the heat of their kiss, over her belly and ribs and onto her breasts, fingers skating over her nipples.

"Regina," he pants as her hand trails down his chest, nails biting into his skin and slipping past the waist of his trousers. She tears a ragged breath from his lips as her hand squeezes his erection and begins to tug, his touch faltering on her breasts as he rocks into her. " _Gods_ ," he groans, resting his forehead on hers and squeezing his eyes shut against the pleasure racing up his spine.

He blinks his eyes open to see her, biting his lip at her knowing smirk and darkening eyes, but she isn't nearly as distracted as him, he hasn't driven her halfway as mad as she's already driven him, and, well, he's going to have to do something to fix that, isn't he?

His fingers close gently around her wrist, and he lifts her arm away from its tortuous touch and above her head, holding it against the wooden panel as he presses his mouth to hers and uses his free hand to lift her shirt.

He waits for her to try to take control again, but when he works her shirt up to her shoulders and pulls back to lift it over her head, faltering for a moment as he takes in her olive skin and bare breasts, she only fists her hands in his shirt and tugs him back.

"Don't you dare stop now," she orders between kisses.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he promises breathlessly, before he tears his lips from hers and begins to leave a trail of kisses down the hollow of her throat and across her collarbone.

He nips the skin just above her breast, soothing over red skin with his tongue, grinning as she pants above him and her fingers fist into his hair.

" _Robin_ ," she whines.

"Mm," he hums against her skin, lips finally on her nipple, her breath hitching, "did you want something?"

"Don't—" she begins, whatever she'd been about to say trailing off into a moan as he shoves at her trousers until they fall halfway down her thigh. He flicks his tongue against her nipple a final time, his cock throbbing at the way it draws a pleasured shout from her lips, then stands and fuses his lips to hers.

"Don't tease," she finishes, her head falling back against the stable door with a thump.

He mock-pouts, hands shifting from pulsing tugs on her nipples to barely-there touch. "Whatever do you mean?" he asks, the innocent lilt of his voice belied by his own breathlessness.

She opens her eyes, glaring at him, only for the expression to collapse into pleasure when he picks the motion up again, one hand reaching between them to circle her entrance, his thumb pressing into her clit.

He hears her nails scrabble against the wood behind her, burying his face in her neck as he slips one finger inside her and she begins to rock eagerly towards him.

She is wet and warm under his touch, and Gods the thought of being inside her leaves him dizzy and wanting.

He adds a second finger, a third, skimming his lips across her jaw and onto her mouth for another kiss.

"You are stunning, Regina," he manages between kisses.

A quiet moan leaves her lips as he finds a better angle to put more pressure on her clit, and he can feel how desperately close she is—and Gods, how close he is as well—but he wants them to come together, to watch her dark eyes as she gives in to release, and so with one final, steady pump of his hands, he pulls away.

She groans in protest, whines, " _Robin_ , _"_ until she sees that he's begun to fumble with the ties of his own trousers.

He doesn't catch her smirk, but suddenly the laces are just—gone—tumbling to the ground beside them in a swirl of purple.

Whatever he might have said about how unnecessary magic was for such a task is lost as she wraps a hand around his length, his hips rocking shallowly, his forehead dropping to hers.

She hitches a leg up around his hip, closing those last few inches of space between them, reaching between them to line him up.

And then he's pressing into her, inch after exquisite inch, hands steadying on her leg and hip as hers skim across his shoulders and her hitching breaths fill his ear.

And it may be sappy, or foolish, it is certainly irrational, but all he can think is that they were built to be like this. Nothing, Gods,  _nothing_  has ever felt so incredible as this.

He draws out once, thrusts back in slowly, delirious words falling into the air between them,  _"You feel amazing."_

Regina whimpers, booted heel digging into his hip, but he doesn't care, can't feel anything but her around him. "More," she demands, hands fisting into his shirt.

Robin groans and obliges, his palm slamming into the wall behind her, his eyes squeezing shut as her whimpers become louder moans and he sets a faster pace. " _Fuck_ ," he pants, her hips lifting off the wood to meet his, and he reaches between them to rub fumblingly at her clit.

He forces his eyes open so that he can watch her, her face scrunching up in ecstasy, a shout tumbling from her lips, and then she clenches and comes around him, nails digging into his shoulders, head falling back against the wood, body arcing into his.

He holds out for one, two, three desperate thrusts more, and then she gasps his name, and that's all it takes for him to crash over the precipice of release, her name rough and frantic as it tumbles from his lips.

Robin presses his forehead into hers, panting, as the pleasured fog clears from his head and they both catch their breaths, little shocks of pleasure still skittering over his body. A tinge of curiosity flares in his chest as she slides her hand from the sweat-dampened shoulders of his tunic to settle on the inside of his right wrist, her hands at once gentle and tense over the mark which she would only have learned about—yesterday, he supposes, when they were playing with Roland and his boy had insisted he needed his daddy's big shirt as a prop.

"What is it?" he asks, his fingers sliding into her hair and languidly working out a couple of tangles. He can almost feel it between them, the way she's building her walls back up, even with his softening cock still buried inside her, the way she cannot bring herself to share what's troubling her.

"Nothing," she insists, shaking her head.

He kisses her sweetly, once, and she lets him, her lips moving gently beneath his. But then she's turning her head away, and so he eases himself out of her and backs a step away.

For a moment, they are silent as they each gather their clothes and set them to rights. When he finishes, he finds that she is staring at him, hair and makeup still disheveled, the ghost of fondness on her lips.

He understands, truly he does, why she needs space right now, but he cannot leave without pressing one last kiss to the back of her hand.

He catches her gaze as he reluctantly allows her hand to fall back to her side.

"When you're ready," he assures her with a gentle smile.

"I'm not sure I'll ever…" she trails off, her eyes bottomless and enthralling, filled with so much pain and just a grain of hope. His heart aches for her.

He walks back to her in one slow stride, picking up her hand and pressing it to his still-pounding heart. "Then I'll believe, for the both of us," he promises. He drops a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then turns to walk away.

"Robin?" she calls as he's opening the stall door.

He turns back to her. "Yes?"

Her voice is small, but steady. "Thank you."

He doesn't know exactly what she means to refer to—perhaps she doesn't, either—but he means his answer no less sincerely. "Always."


End file.
